Roe Ethridge

IT SEEMS TO ME that the two worlds of art photography and commercial photography are like parallel universes. Both go through their ruthless cycles, aware of each other but too busy with their own internal battles to look outward. There are many exceptions—instances where the universes do intersect—and I am grateful for those. But I think there are functional differences between the fields that may never be resolved.

Some of these differences are actually important to me, and I would hate to see them disappear. For example, within the commercial image there is generally an understood

print December 2012

THEIR FAVORITE EXHIBITIONS OF THE YEAR

To take stock of the past year, Artforum asked an international group of artists to select the single image, exhibition, or event that most memorably captured their eye in 2012.

RITA ACKERMANN

Gang Gang Dance (September 22, Cameo Gallery, Brooklyn) If materialism is the unwanted fat on our spirits, Gang Gang Dance’s music is the blade that cuts it all off. Their sounds burn up that heaviness of need and greed and lift the spirits to other dimensions. A hundred years ago, Rudolf Steiner wrote The Philosophy of Freedom and feverishly lectured about protective space and other visionary ideas to